Forty Years From Now
by FannyT
Summary: It all happened as in their worst fears. Kyo lost the fight the cage clanged shut. The curse remained in place, unbroken and unchanged. Tohru left. But Haru and Rin remained, watching and waiting and hoping, always, for change.


Disclaimer: I do not own the Fruits Basket series.

This contains spoilers up to... book fifteen, sixteen. Just to give you a fair warning...

Forty years from now

Haru's hair shows his age, even though his face is barely lined and he still moves well. But his hair... once black and white, clearly defined, it has become dusty grey and dusty white. Like his feelings, because although he used to know so certainly what was wrong and what was right, flaring up in terrible tempers when he believed justice had not been done, now he's no longer so sure. His beliefs are constantly being revalued and he doubts his own strength – just as Rin's fire and passion has mellowed, and her fears and her self disgust have settled into a vague unease that gnaws her gut during long nights, but mostly leaves her alone.

Sometimes, when he's annoyed and he snaps, she'll ask if it was Black Haru talking and they'll smile – but tiredly, because the joke is old.

* * *

They go and see Kyo sometimes. Haru started it, because he's kind – so kind, it used to frighten her. Now it makes her smile, and wish to be like him. That's why she goes with him, every time, even though standing outside those barred windows make her shake and feel ill. 

They bring him fruit, and wild flowers, and human voices. He accepts everything they give him gratefully, reaching his hands out between the bars and picking their gifts up carefully so as to touch their skin as little as possible. (After being told that he is dirty for sixty years, he's starting to believe it.) He talks to them calmly, with a soft voice – so unlike the rough tones he used to speak in. He never explodes like he used to. And when he has gathered the food and small presents they bring him he'll rest his wrists on the window sill, clasping his hands gently.

His knuckles still bear the marks of the first five years, when he'd wear them bloody, smashing them against the bars.

That's what makes her shiver, when she comes. The sight of that boy – she can't say man; how can you say man about someone who was removed from the world before his nineteenth year was ended? – and the knowledge that even he, who was so fierce and who fought so hard, broke in the end... her stomach turns with fear. Such was the influence of Akito. He broke Kyo slowly, rotting him from within, making it clear that he was worthless, disgusting and tainted. And he reached with his hands between the bars and said, "It's alright. Because I love you. No one else does, they all hate you, even that girl you so adore... but I love you."

Even Kyo started listening to that, in the end.

Akito didn't need strength to hold them all in his thrall. He had an influence over the mind that made them all slaves to his twisted will. And seeing Kyo's humbled spirit, she can't help thinking, if Akito hadn't died – would they all be obeying his commands, still? Would she and Haru have spent their lives apart, too afraid to come close again? They always tell themselves they wouldn't, but she fears that it is a lie. Self-deceiving. Because didn't they leave each other, when Akito found out about them the first time? (Or _she_ left _him_. He has never mentioned it, not once in all their years together, but she knows he never forgot it either.) And although they found each other again; when the whispers started up, saying they'd been seen together, they once more stopped seeing each other, immediately. Haru even started seeing some girl at university instead – first making it clear to Akito that it was nothing serious – and that is something _she_ has never forgotten.

They waited for things to pass. Instead, Akito passed away, and all their fears with him. Or so they thought, until they realised one day that the fear was still there – only now it was inside them.

When Akito passed, Kyo was already well behind locks and bars. Not stilled, not by far, but slightly more docile. Looking back, she suspects that somewhere around that time was when he began his descent into complete surrender. Akito had worked at his mind for years, by then, and the only thing that had kept Kyo from giving in was the will to defy that terrifying authority. When he no longer had something to focus his hate on he became lost, a bullet without a mark, fighting in vain.

He was silent for two years, after Akito died.

Now he talks, even laughs, and last time they were there he asked about Tohru. The question was long in coming and he said it quickly, shutting his mouth abruptly afterwards and biting his dry old lips so hard the skin broke. Haru, who if he's lost his passionate nature at least hasn't lost his honesty, told him the straight truth. She's happy. And no, she doesn't see us anymore.

You're not the only one she avoids.

Rin has seen her sometimes, in town, with her husband and children (although now they're not children any longer, but men and women) but has never stopped to say hello. Not because she fears she would be unpleasant – it's a long time since Rin lost control of her temper and lashed out at those around her – but rather because she fears she would embarrass herself by crying and pleading with Tohru to return to them. It meant so much, to her, to have the fresh thoughts of a non-Sohma in their life. And Kyo, and Yuki, and Kisa... Tohru meant much to all of them. Her betrayal – because that's what it felt like, when she left and did not return – was a shock. Rin knew how hard it was, to deal with their dark and cursed lives. But she thought that Tohru was different, that maybe, she could even save them...

Instead Tohru gave up. Not so strange, perhaps, when the one she loved was caged and shut away for good. But she didn't even fight it. It was as if her strength was spent, and she left them all – couldn't bear to see them.

Akito never deigned to mention her, but one could sense the smugness in his benevolent manner for months. Rin felt like throwing up every time he smiled in her direction.

* * *

As she did when they were young, visiting Yuki in secret, Rin holds lookout when Haru goes to visit Yuki's grave. She watches the road carefully, looking for a car she recognises or an attendant out walking, knowing that if they are found there they will surely be punished severely. Suicide is an ugly and shameful thing in the Sohma family; and even more so for the young prodigy, the star, the one who would rise to a position of fame and glory as the head's special chosen. He wasn't buried with the Sohma family, and his grave is neglected and never visited except by them, and that girl from school he loved (they've seen her once or twice). We shall not pay him our respects, Akito declared, and was obeyed. Except Haru would still go – and Rin, too, to keep him out of trouble as she always has done. 

It was an easy way out, in a sense. But Yuki just couldn't live with himself – Haru theorised, sitting in the sofa with an old family photo album in his lap, caressing a picture of a smiling Yuki when the small shameful funeral was over. He had loved Tohru deeply and through her had come to care for Kyo as well. And he blamed himself, saying if only I hadn't pretended to lose that match. If only they hadn't realised it, if only they'd thought that Kyo won. If only I had been weaker and less agile, giving him an even chance of beating me. If only I hadn't trained so compulsively even though I knew I would fight him at the end of the month, if only I hadn't had to resort to faking a loss, if only I'd been able to lose, for real...

If only if only if only if only...

And so he hanged himself, quite non-dramatically one day from the living room ceiling. He who used to say he never gave up, that he was too selfish and greedy a person to give up, he gave up everything at the time when he was most needed.

Unable to bear the heavy weight of that responsibility, Haru says. Shirking his duties, Rin calls it. Had he had the courage to live, he might have found that he could be a great support to Tohru during that time. Instead, with the death of one of her dearest friends and the practically death of her loved one so close to each other, it's no wonder she could no longer stand being around people that reminded her of all she had lost.

* * *

The rest of them are scattered now. Some have left the city, some the country, and out of the thirteen of them only Shigure, Rin and Haru remain in the Sohma grounds. Oh, and Kyo, of course – but then that doesn't really count since forced imprisonment can't really be called "remaining". 

It's strange, in a way, that Rin and Haru – who were so eager to break out – are the ones who stayed, all their lives.

Kagura has moved far away and seldom visits. She never took a husband, and she lives a secluded artist's life up in the north somewhere. (She has never given them her address.) Her paintings have won several prices, but she has not been there in person to receive any of them. In another person it could be calculated, this solitude, adding to the mystery of the artist. With Kagura the reason is much simpler – she couldn't bear to see Kyo in his cage. She has never returned to the Sohma grounds since the day of that fateful final match, the loss of Kyo against Yuki, and although her paintings often feature cages and collars she has never even seen how he lives now. Perhaps she doesn't need to. She sees it all too vividly in her mind.

Whenever Rin thinks of her, she imagines her living in a large wood free from other inhabitants, where she can go out and run headfirst into some trees when her wild mood besets her. She's probably happy, in her own way.

Ritsu's life is a secluded one, as well. He took over his parents' business and although he calls Rin and Haru now and again to wail about failure, death and – horror of all horrors – bankruptcy, he manages it quite well. Just as well as his parents, and their parents before them. He has his companion, an open-minded woman who doesn't mind his occasional appearances in female dress, and lives his life as he has always done in a state of constant nervousness. His life was never much affected by the curse. Rin doubts if the breaking of it would make any change as to how he sees the world. He always seemed to deal with it as best he could – that is, by panicking. As he did with everything else.

Momiji still comes to see them, whenever he's in town. He plays a lot in Europe, now – mainly Germany – and they read about him occasionally in the local newspaper. And whenever there is a photo, his sister Momo is to be seen somewhere in the background. She follows him wherever he goes. Her mother, blind to the family likeness that to anyone else is painfully obvious, pushed for marriage as long as she was alive. They learnt in time to control the horrific expressions her less-than-subtle hints brought on.

Momo had a child eventually. The papers never found out by whom. As a babe he rode on his mother's back in a papoose basket as she helped set up electric equipment, as a boy he carried violins while she and Momiji pushed the piano into position and as a young man he massaged her shoulders as she sat for hours coordinating concerts and flight schedules. The evil rumours of him actually being Momiji's were not squashed by the fact that he was black-haired with green eyes, but as he has grown one can see the resemblance to a famous French violinist.

Coincidence, perhaps. Or maybe not. Momo has never told, and probably never will. She's happy, spending her life with her beloved older brother, and her child is a blessing that came to her without the bother of having to take care of a husband. She thinks she has the best of both worlds, and who's to say she's wrong?

And whatever rumours Momiji and Momo may suffer through, they are safe away from the Sohma House. At least Momiji feels that out there, once they're gone from that stifling world, nothing can touch them.

Hiro and Kisa are still in town, but they've moved out from the Sohma grounds. They live in Shigure's old house now, while he has moved back into a room in the Main House – closer to the daily care and help he needs. Hiro was not too sure about moving into that house at first, filled as it was with memories of Tohru and a time when they thought the curse could be broken. Maybe she would, even after she had left them, continue to steal a part of Kisa from him – so he reasoned, jealously.

But Kisa hasn't mentioned Tohru since she left. If they met again, today, Kisa probably wouldn't even say hello.

They tried going for a holiday once, the four of them – Hiro and Kisa and Haru and Rin – but it never worked out. The close bond and strong brotherly love Haru had for Kisa became awkward when the age difference became less pronounced, just as the understanding between Hiro and Rin seemed suspicious. Even Kisa, certainly not a jealous nature, would look concerned when Rin and Hiro sat talking close together, heads bent so far towards each other their noses almost touched.

Haru and Rin still go over to see them, though. They go to dinner, and they laugh all four around the table where four others used to sit – and before that, where three young men used to share their _sake_. They were happy and young and unconcerned, far from the curse. Yet it held them all in its net, each in his own way.

Shigure is the only one left of those three now. Maybe that is his punishment, Rin thinks, for all those years of wheedling and manipulating and scheming. To see his friends go, and be the only one left. Mayu talks to him sometimes out of pity, and also because there is no one else with whom to discuss the person most important to her life, but most often he pretends as though he's not listening. He is, though. He drinks in every word, believing that in some way they can bring his friend back to life. He's not as senile as he pretends, but on those days when he's more talkative he'll ask her again and again to describe a certain day or a certain party, smiling as a picture of Hatori is painted up before him. And Mayu, herself old and bent now, smiles in turn because she has found someone willing to listen.

She, too, profited from Akito's death. If he hadn't passed, Hatori would never have been allowed to have a new love. It put a strain on their relationship, probably, because they were locked in a kind of status quo for years – not lovers, because Hatori wouldn't have dared, but too close for friends. When Akito finally died, at least they didn't mourn for long.

Noone has seen Kureno for many years now. He disappeared after Akito's death, leaving behind immaculately ordered papers and finances, a room in the Main House completely devoid of personality, and a broken-hearted young woman.

After Haru and Rin, she is probably the one who visits Kyo the most.

Even though Uotani Arisa is not a Sohma, they often see her by Kyo's cage, seated on the bench underneath his barred window. They never approach her while she's sitting there, not wanting to break into their conversation and destroy what always appears to be an open-hearted rapport. But although they avoid to go close they can still hear her husky voice spiritedly telling him stories of the outside world, and they can hear him laugh.

He never laughs with them.

It makes Rin feel a little jealous – a little inadequate. It hurts her to know that although they try so hard, they are not quite enough.

Arisa never brings Kyo anything, apart from her voice and her laughter and her invincible, unbeatable strength. But she can wake him from his quiet acceptance of fate.

Rin saw her once crouching on the bench and dangling a leek through the bars, teasing, taunting... Kyo's voice could be heard, too, pissed-off and harsh; and as Arisa threw her head back and laughed and laughed Rin bit her lip and nearly cried. It was the old Kyo she heard, the awkward child with a short temper and a loud voice, and she missed him so. It saddened her beyond words to realise that they'd just about lost him.

She hopes, always, that Arisa will never leave... like Tohru did. She wouldn't want to know what that would do to Kyo.

For some time she wished, selfishly, that Arisa was the one who would save them, instead. She knows now that it isn't so, and also that the hope of a saviour is a vain one. They've always been alone, the Sohmas, and it's too hard for anyone from the outside to break into that fortress. It's up to them to ease their own lives.

Arisa cared for Kyo, and Yuki, and she laughed with Haru and Momiji at school. She stills nods to Haru pleasanty every time they meet, and Momiji has told them she came to see him play once – even sent flowers. But apart from Kureno, she never knew anyone else of the Sohmas, and she has no wish to do so now. It's hard enough for her, Rin imagines, to keep coming to see Kyo even though he must remind her of the one who left, and she admires the other woman for it. She knows she wouldn't be able to do it, if it had been Haru who had left never to return.

But Arisa has always impressed with her courage. Haru has told Rin this, that even back then when they were all so young and frightened and small – even then Arisa stood straight and strong. Her father's apathetic years taught her independence; but her time in the gang and her contact with the Hondas taught her that independence is worth nothing if it makes you alone, and strength is worth nothing if it makes you hard. She was a well-balanced young woman by the time she reached high school, and more mature than many.

_Sometimes_, Rin adds mentally, recalling how she has seen Arisa dancing on Kyo's bench, just out of reach of the hands groping between the bars, and singing in a lilting voice _Itty-bitty kitty-cat, scaredy-cat say where's he at_...

Strangely enough, that was the same little tune Rin heard the new rat hum, when they'd been to see Kyo for the first time.

The new rat is a girl born to Kana – of all the ironies. She, who had the memory of her love to a cursed one erased, bore one herself. She's been a good mother, but Rin is sure that Hatori must have looked at that child many times with at least a shadow of regret.

He and Mayu never had children.

The new rat's name is Mika, and she calls Kyo Oji-san. The first time Rin and Haru took her to see him, she was so small she still couldn't say her "R"-s properly. If anybody had known the two of them were taking her to see Kyo, they would probably have accused the couple of trying to indoctrinate her. They would be right. Haru and Rin resolved when Yuki died that next time, they would try to disrupt the laws of karma and the needle of destiny just a little bit. If that meant forcing their own views on a child too young to know – well, wasn't that what the Sohma family was all about?

They left Kyo crying, that time. They had lifted Mika up to the bars, presenting the young man inside as her Oji-san, the cat; and she had taken his large hand in her tiny and said "Hello, Jii-than" and then "My canawy liveth in a cage, too".

She had been five years old and easily distracted, and she had prattled on about anything that entered her mind right then. Kyo had listened to her, smiling, and after a while he had turned and sat down with his back against the wall so that all they could see when they looked through the window was his orange hair – and although he still listened attentively and answered Mika's childish questions with a laugh, his voice was somewhat thick and muffled. That's when Haru had whispered in Rin's ear that it was probably time to take Mika-chan home, and she had left with the child after saying their goodbyes: "...an' when I come home I will tell mum I met you an' I will call my canawy Kyo but Kyo-chan not Kyo-jii-than becauthe that'th you an' can I come back to vithit?"

Rin had told her of course she could and Kyo had said quietly that he'd love to have her and then Rin had left leading the young girl by her hand. She looked back over her shoulder, and saw Haru sitting with one hand reaching between the bars, talking in a calm, soothing voice.

To this day, Mika still goes to see Kyo.

"It seems our manipulative plans paid off," Haru said once as they saw her sitting on the bench with a complete tea set, just then passing a cup through the bars; and they smiled at each other, happy at having broken at least this one trapping of fate.

They spend as much time with the new Juunishi as they can. The snake is a girl, too, twelve years old at the moment and adorable, and seems to have inherited nothing even slightly feminine except a long silver mane from her predecessor. She's boisterous and loud and cheerful, and is always getting into scrapes that she only narrowly gets out of alive. She's a true tomboy, playing only with boys, but she has never yet been in trouble by the curse which suggests she's rather clever under the grime. She has a father who dotes on her, and no mother. Accident, says the official report. Suicide, is what everyone knows to be the truth.

The new dragon is only three at the moment. It's not so long since Hatori died. The boy is, right now, little more than a ball of snot; but as soon as he can begin to form proper sentences they're taking him to see Kyo, as they've done with all the new ones and are planning to keep doing.

There hasn't been a new rooster yet. Arisa keeps a closer ear on the news of the family than should be possible for an outsider, and every time there is talk of a pregnancy they know she waits in anguish. Not certain whether she wants it to be Kureno's spirit reborn, or not.

Rin wants it to be the rooster next time. She wants the uncertainty to stop.

The new God is frightening and powerful, just like the old one, but to Haru and Rin he can never measure up to the sickening, mind-twistingly fierce power of Akito. And as for Ayame, Shigure and Hatori, who had even found Akito a child – mighty, but possible to handle – to them this new God was one to hardly heed at all. They dared to defy him openly, and seeing this Haru and Rin found the courage to do their own, albeit small and usually secret, acts of defiance.

So maybe that is the breaking of the curse, in the end. Not something sudden; a spell, a word and then freedom – but something that is slow but sure, a work spanning generations. Perhaps all they can hope for is to influence their youngers, and hope that when their time comes they will teach _their_ younger relatives acceptance, and love, and keeping an open mind.

Rin doesn't think so far ahead as that. She only hopes that when the next horse is born, after she has finally left the world and even Haru behind, they'll have parents who love them. Nothing more. Their parents' love...

"And the cow's?" says Haru, and smiles as he takes her old hand in his. Then he picks up his hat and opens the door and together they walk out in the sunshine, to visit the grave of one for whom the curse was all too much. And they hope and dream and wish that of the next generation of cursed, no one will have to end their life by their own hand.

Wishing that they all may achieve happiness might be a goal a little too far out of reach.

* * *

_Hello! This might be a bit depressing, I know. I hope things won't turn out like this in the series itself... and I doubt they will. _

_Hope you liked the story, even if this future is a rather bleak one...;)_


End file.
